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Finally painted something, and this time my version of a feathered male tyrannosaurus. Females would be brownish with less markings. I gave the males a sort of pouch on its neck that works the same way as the Frigatebirds.

I see T.rex as a bit of scavenger and opportunist hunter. So gave it some sort of distracting markings.

The only specimen that had any integument impression showed nothing but small scales on the underside of the tail and some of the stomach. None of the body showed any integument other than that. Phylogenetic bracketing shows us that it is extremely likely that T.rex had feathers somewhere on its body. How extensive its feathering is isn't entirely known but there is no reason to believe that it wasn't feathered and every reason to believe that it was.

I don't have to give you an explanation. Simple as that. In other words, I've stated what I meant, so trying to ask and repeatedly get the same answer is really what you're going to get. No further response is needed.

If I would get a dollar every time someone uses the term "opportunist hunter" ...

Anyways:

Specimen looks far, far to lightweight, and proportions are generally more than a bit off. Especially to long neck stands out.

The feathers are just plain wrong. Tyrannosaurs had, as a group of coelosaurs that split from the main family relatively early (middle to late jurassic) no real feathers, but stage 1 "protofeathers", which would appear to the untrained eye more like fur than modern feathers.

well I cannot see it as a hunter who hunts everything in its path. I see them work the lion way. Kill if they get the chance, if needed.

and I'm aware of the proportions, especially the neck which I noticed after I was done. I do not draw dinosaurs often enough. Yet, I've seen lightweight and heavy weight tyrannosaurs, unsure what is accurate.

and the feathers are protofeathers if you look closely, not the real feathers. (except on the arms as I'm unsure if those two types of feathers can mix)

_Every_ hunter is an "opportunist hunter". No predator hunts everything in it's path, hunting is very, very energy-consuming and comes with the risk of injuring, which in turn can very easily spell doom for the predator. And no predator would eschew carrion, it is basically free meat.

And while there are a "grazile" morph and a "robust" morph of T. rex, even the grazile morph is far, far heavier than this one.

And I have no problem with the plummage of the torso, but with the feathers on the arms and especially the neck look strange

I think this drawing could be perfectly realistic. Nobody ever traveled back in time so all we can do is suppositions. Everything we think we know about prehistoric life are suppositions. And to me, the arms are ok, much like a deinonychosaur's arm, much like a bird. Have you ever heard about ''All Yesterdays''? It speculates about prehistoric life and how it REALLY lived. And the piece of art I am commenting about might enter this category. And most of all it's beautiful and really well done, even if it is a bit un-scaled

I really love it when people don't ignore the fact that T-Rex had feathers. People are totally wrong when they say it's less cool that way--as you've shown, feathered theropods can still be totally as cool as their now-defunct non-feathered representations. And it shows their relation to birds, which I think it cool in itself. ...I just like things to be science-accurate!

All known living relatives of Smilodon have fur. Fur loss in mammals is a secondary process which happened in order to adapt to certain environments (see whales, naked moles and tropical megafauna). Pennaceous feathers are so far only known from maniraptoriformes, the group containing ornithimimosauria and maniraptora. The tyrannosauroidae, which T. rex is a member of, is a far, far more ancient clade of coelurosaurs, in fact the oldest known tyrannosauroid is about as old as the eldest known coelurosaur. The only known feathers present in tyrannosauroids were stage 1 protofeathers, which lacked quills and are more akin to plummage or even mammalian fur in their appereance. This Tyrannosaurus clearly features more advanced feathers.

Feathers and scales don't have to be mutually exclusive, this beliefs comes from a few decades ago when it was still believed that feathers were a mutation of the scale, which occured in some small theropod dinosaurs which went on to become the birds we know today, With the discovery of a wide range of different dinosaurs with some stuff covering their skin, not only in theropoda (which is, of course, still boast the largest number of feathered dinosaurs) but also in ornithischians like Heterodontosaurus, Psittacosaurus and Triceratops. Together with the fact that the closest relatives of dinosaurs, the pterosaurs also posessed a fur-like coat covering their skin, I interpret this as strong evidence for feathers and their predecessors being far more basal to the Archosauria than formerly believed (I think there are even some genetic studies that show that crocodiles posess genes for feather growth). We should look into the Permian, for the key to the secret of the feather is probably found there.

Of course a "naked" tyrannosaur wouldn't necessarily be covered in scales, maybe they had only bare skin. But as feathered tyrannosaurids are highly likely, and we have some small scale patches attributed to a North American tyrannosaurid, they most likely looked very weird, like a half-plucked chicken. A 13 meter long, six tons heavy plucked chicken.

Dinosaurs are weird. (Just take a look at recent Deinocheirus reconstructions)